Chris Christie thinks Putin wouldn’t test him like he does Obama, and that’s driving liberals nuts

posted at 7:21 pm on September 2, 2014 by Noah Rothman

President Barack Obama’s impotent approach to the international crises proliferating around the globe has resulted in a bipartisan barrage of criticisms directed at him and his administration, and it’s all getting to be just too much to handle for Obama’s remaining supporters.

The latest to offend the sensibilities of those for whom the Islamic State is a threat only to our ability to craft convincing moral equivalencies for their abhorrent acts is New Jersey governor and 2016 Republican presidential hopeful Chris Christie. According to a report from New York Times journalist and Christie tracker Michael Barbaro, the governor had the temerity recently to suggest that Russian President Vladimir Putin would think twice before testing his resolve in the same way he is forever testing our current commander-in-chief.

Barbaro is sure to let the reader know that this impractical display of bravado repulsed the urbane and erudite crowd who attended the confidential meeting of Republican activists where Christie spoke.

“One attendee described Mr. Christie’s answer as disturbingly heavy on swagger and light on substance,” Barbaro reported. “Another called it ‘uncomfortable to watch.’”

Shockingly, the reaction expressed by these two Republican activists precisely mirrored the reactions of liberal columnists and MSNBC commentators. Serendipity!

Writing on what he considered Christie’s “gaffe,” The New Republic’s Brian Beutler determined that Christie had declared his intention as president to violate Obama’s one and only rule: “Don’t do stupid s**t.”

“Say what you will about the tenets of not doing ‘stupid s**t,’ at least it’s an ethos,” Beutler wrote, in an homage to The Big Lebowski’s Walter Sobchak. “New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, by contrast, appears to have taken his organizing foreign policy principle from Travis Bickle.”

Ah, movies. Only in Hollywood, you see, does Christie-esque — let’s call it ‘audacity’ — suffice as a foreign policy. Well, in movies and in the Kremlin, too. But only those Neanderthals without a degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School would consider this a deliberative approach to foreign affairs.

Beutler was not alone in scoffing at Christie’s attempt to strike a contrast with Obama. MSNBC’s Morning Joe hosts observed that the true test of our time is the fact that the governor of the Garden State does not have a coherent policy to address Russia’s six-month-old invasion of its European neighbor.

“When he’s in Trenton, that swagger works,” Joe Scarborough said. “Outside of Trenton, you get him on foreign policy, he gets in trouble.”

“Outside of that comfort zone, a lot of people are saying it’s a mile wide and an inch deep,” the host said of Christie’s understanding of nuanced foreign affairs.

On her program, The Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart noted that The New York Times made it perfectly clear exactly how the reader should feel about Christie’s remarks. He dutifully repeated Barbaro’s conclusions. “Folks want to hear the substance and it’s clear governor Christie doesn’t have the substance yet,” Capehart said.

These are not entirely unfair criticisms. Christie has spent a fair amount of time with Republican foreign policy heavyweights like Condoleezza Rice and Henry Kissinger in the effort to bone up on global affairs. But Christie has time to learn the specifics. The president, meanwhile, has had five years to learn on the job how the world works, and it is unclear that he has internalized any of the many lessons he has been taught while in office.

The ISIS threat has cleared the post-Iraq War hangover, and America is once again warming to necessary military interventions abroad. The universal squeals from the center-left press over Christie’s comments suggests they fear that the public may also miss seeing a little old fashioned American swagger in the Oval Office.

According to a report from New York Times journalist and Christie tracker Michael Barbaro, the governor had the temerity recently to suggest that Russian President Vladimir Putin would think twice before testing his resolve in the same way he is forever testing our current commander-in-chief.

ROFL! What would Christie OR Obama even do? Start a nuclear war with Russia? Lol! Christie’s trapped, like most Baby Boomers, in the pre-1989 world where only the USA and USSR mattered. That world does not exist anymore.

Putin doesn’t give a damn what the USA has to say. Our foreign policy, Obama’s, isn’t an “the world bends over to Americans” policy. The EU beats the US in GDP and population. China and India are emerging 1 billion person superpowers. The world has changed.

“I don’t believe, given who I am, that he would make the same judgment,” Christie said of Putin’s brazen revanchism and military land grabs in Europe. “Let’s just leave it at that.”
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Maybe Christie thinks that we need a little 1980’s foreign policy back. It worked well for Ronald Reagan!

Memo to Governor Christie: we could have used some of that bravado around Halloween of 2012, instead of wimpily cozying up to King Putt after Sandy left the shore in a shambles. You know, like Haley Barbour telling his state to hike up its britches after Katrina went through Mississippi. Or Bobby Jindal out on a ship trying to build a sand bar to protect his wetlands from the 2010 oil slick.

A little bravado back then, and we could have had President Romney, who knew Russia was our greatest foe, and wouldn’t have given Putin the “flexibility” to invade Ukraine.

Christie is absolutely right, but in a fuller account, Putin wouldn’t test ANY theoretical American President the way he tests Obama.

The only possible exception would be Rand Paul, and Paul could meet that challenge.

The crazy thing about Putin is that he isn’t crazy at all. He knows that nothing short of a land-invasion of Germany is going to provoke a reaction from Obama worthy of being called a “response” by players of the Great Game.

More dangerously, Putin knows that absolutely nothing (possibly INCLUDING a nuclear strike on America) would provoke Secular Jesus to use nuclear weapons. His KGB shrinks have long ago informed him that using nukes runs counter to Obama’s psychological constitution.

The next two years are an insanely dangerous time to live on this planet. Unless Putin really is more timid than he’s letting on, and just having his way with a milksop party boy while he knows he can. In which case, it’s just a great time to be a Russian nationalist.

The Russian president is reported to have boasted his forces could sweep into Kiev in a fortnight if he wanted to as Nato announced it would build a new “spearhead” rapid reaction force
9:11PM BST 01 Sep 2014
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Crispy Creme is irrelevant. He has no chance at winning he nomination. Why do you establishment shills keep bringing him up? It’s like you keep going back and forth from Romney to Crispy, back to Romney, now this week it’s Crispy.

Get it through your thick skulls. No Northeastern progressive, establishment WHIG is going to win the nomination.

And if you change the rules again to enable them to get the nomination, they will LOSE in the General…AGAIN.

Actually don’t know why the libs would be upset at this. When Hillary starts trying to separate herself from Obama during her run she’s going to say similar things. Oh, and domestically there wouldn’t be a damned difference between Christie and Hillary.

The ISIS threat has cleared the post-Iraq War hangover, and America is once again warming to necessary military interventions abroad. The universal squeals from the center-left press over Christie’s comments suggests they fear that the public may also miss seeing a little old fashioned American swagger in the Oval Office.

After news broke about Sotloff’s execution today, I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama’s first call was to…Sandy Berger (and I’m only sort of joking).

He has been warned for over a year.

He knows (not in the Troofer sense) what is coming.

He knows that it is a near-certainty that IS already has sleeper cells in the US.

He knows that he won’t be able to really get away with ‘It’s Booooosh’s fault!’ if another 09.11 (on the homeland) happens on his watch.

He knows that 73% of Americans are concerned that he lacks a strategy.

He knows – deep down – that he has made colossal miscalculations (Elect me and we’ll get along with the Muslim World because of my biography!; his Rodney King-like Cairo speech; his failure in Iraq; his support for toppling dictators that had some of these nutters under control; the Arab ‘Spring’; etc, etc, etc).

He knows that he hasn’t a strategy.

He knows that he doesn’t want to make a decision because, after all, America can ‘absorb’ another 09.11./

He knows that his base will go nuts.

He also knows that he might want to remove any ‘smoking gun’ documents so that a future 09.11 Commission will not have access to them…because history!

“Say what you will about the tenets of not doing ‘stupid s**t,’ at least it’s an ethos,” Beutler wrote, in an homage to The Big Lebowski’s Walter Sobchak. “New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, by contrast, appears to have taken his organizing foreign policy principle from Travis Bickle.”

Oh, and you guys knocking Christy, you don’t have any idea how political battles are won…no one would ever vote for James Carville, but look what he did for the democratic party, an absolute genius, but couldn’t win an election if he had to.

That is where libs have an edge…they understand these tactics…the get the Wasserman’s, Frank’s, Carville’s of political life.

And doing nothing while IS is established and Putin is having a party is not doing stupid s***?

There is a whole lotta stupid in our current administration’s decisions. And I fear that the entire world is going to pay on some level for years for what they are not doing now. Inaction can be ‘stupid s***’ just as much as knee jerk military actions.

History defines just how stupid an administration is. Sometimes you have to wait decades for that declaration, but I’m seriously worried that we won’t have to wait that long for the results to come in on this one.

But of course, it’s business as usual for opinion journalists who snark over their bifocals. This is much bigger than individual players.

“The importance of it is the more votes you get, the more chance you have to win,” he said bluntly. “And I don’t care who those votes come from, as long as you wind up with more than the other guy, you win, you get to govern, and that’s what our party should be focused on.”